The disconnect in how the sexes view gender diversity matters given that so many middle and senior managers are men.
Illustration:
Brian Stauffer for The Wall Street Journal

For all the effort employers are pouring into advancing women in the workplace, why are they making so little headway?

One big obstacle: Men and women are at odds over whether there even is a problem to begin with.

In the same offices and on the same teams, women largely view gender equality as a work still in early progress, while many male colleagues see a mission accomplished. Significantly more men than women say their companies are level playing fields and have plenty of women leaders, even in places where less than 1 in 10 top executives are women. And they are much more likely to say gender diversity isn’t a priority for them, often because they think merit would suffer.

Women in the Workplace

This article is part of a Wall Street Journal special report on women, men and work, based on a survey by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co.

The disconnect matters given that so many middle and senior managers are men. Among factors that smooth or stymie career advancement, women say that daily interactions with their direct bosses are more important than the tone set by top leadership—and one of the many ways that their experiences diverge from those of their male co-workers. Women are less likely than men to feel that their managers give them opportunities to grow, and less likely to feel that their managers consider a diverse set of people for promotions. The sexes are even more divided on whether bosses consistently challenge biased or disrespectful behavior toward women.

Those are some of the findings of LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co.’s 2017 Women in the Workplace report. In one of the largest efforts ever to gauge the attitudes and experiences of working women, researchers collected data on promotions, attrition and career arcs at 222 companies and surveyed 70,000 of those companies’ employees in North America.

The perception gap could explain why so many employers are still struggling to crack the code to retaining and promoting more women, despite no shortage of initiatives.

The information shows that 85% of the companies surveyed track women at each rung of the managerial ladder. Roughly one-third set gender targets for senior roles and in key operations; 40% hold top leaders accountable for how well they meet those goals.

It isn’t just lip service that is driving such measures. A growing body of evidence shows that having more women in power and having more diverse decision makers boosts the bottom line.

A 2015 McKinsey study of 366 companies, for instance, found those with more women on their leadership teams and boards of directors were more likely to post higher profits than their competitors compared with companies that had relatively low numbers of senior women. More than three-quarters of the companies tracked by Lean In and McKinsey say they have made that business case to employees.

But at every career stage, the disparities between men and women have barely narrowed in recent years. Though roughly equal shares of men and women make up entry-level jobs, men outnumber women nearly 2 to 1 by the first move up the management ladder.

And that gap widens with every step toward the C-suite, where women hold just one-fifth of top roles.

The drop-off is even steeper for women of color, who make up less than 4% of senior jobs. Black women in particular face a precipitous trek to the top: They are less likely than other women to get promotions and more likely to have never interacted with senior leaders.

Along the way, many women come to see a workplace tilted against them. Some 37% of women say their gender has played a role in losing a promotion or other chance to get ahead, compared with 8% of men. While nearly half of men feel promotions at their companies are given out fairly, only 40% of women agree. Frequent face time with senior leaders feeds both men’s and women’s ambitions to climb to the top, Lean In and McKinsey found, yet women were less likely to report having such interactions.

Some companies are trying to improve women’s odds, not just as they launch their careers but well before and after. At Lyft Inc.—where 36% of the firm’s leadership and 18% of its tech staff are women—hiring bosses are required to include at least one woman and one ethnic minority in the final round of interviews for director-level positions and higher.

Blackstone Group
LP, where women made up just 15% of its entry-level analyst positions a few years ago, no longer waits to seek out female recruits in their final years of college. Instead, it is cultivating them as sophomores with a program to introduce them to the private-equity giant and build résumé and interviewing skills.

Perception Gap

Men are more likely than women to say that plenty of women are in senior levels, even at companies where only one in 10 senior executives is female.

At firms where...

share of

women in

top jobs is*

the percentage of men and

women who say women are well

represented in high-level roles

Women

33%

0–10%

Men

49%

43%

11–20%

60%

42%

21–30%

61%

53%

31–40%

67%

78%

41%+

86%

Network Access

Women are less likely than men to say

they have substantive interaction at least monthly with a senior leader, a difference that grows as they move up the career ladder.

Women

30%

Entry level

Men

31%

39%

Middle

management

44%

51%

Senior level*

59%

*Vice president and above

Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2017 survey of 70,000 men and women and study of 222 companies

“It is really hard to imagine how you’re going to expand your pipeline if your applicant pool isn’t any bigger,” says
Joan Solotar,
senior managing director and head of Blackstone’s private-wealth solutions business and external relations. Since the program’s 2015 start, the percentage of analysts at the firm who are women has increased to 40%.

Across corporations, though, the study suggests that efforts to diversify the workforce are getting lost in translation.

Nearly 90% of companies surveyed, represented by their HR departments or other senior spokespeople, say that advancing women is very important to their chief executives, but when individuals are asked, only 44% of women think so, compared with 57% of men.

Neither sex puts significant stock in one of the most common diversity initiatives: so-called employee affinity groups, where women and other underrepresented employees network and exchange career advice.

Some 83% of companies provide such groups. Yet 58% of women feel the groups have no impact on their careers, nearly the same percentage as men.

How is there such a disconnect between companies’ goals and the experiences of the women they employ? And how can business leaders help move the needle toward gender equality at every level of the workplace?

Managing in the middle

One group with a lot of potential to make a difference: midlevel managers.

Lean In and McKinsey’s findings echo those of other studies which show that these bosses, direct managers of teams or departments, often hold the greatest sway over employees’ ambitions and the speed at which they climb the career ladder. Yet many of these managers aren’t aware of the subtle efforts that can help women employees, says
Elisabeth Kelan,
professor of leadership at Cranfield School of Management in Bedfordshire, England.

“It isn’t that these men, and sometimes women, get up in the morning and say, ‘OK, I’m going to be a barrier to women,’ ” Ms. Kelan says.

In her own research, Ms. Kelan shadowed male, midlevel managers at several companies who were seen as inclusive bosses. Often, they would suggest women take so-called stretch assignments, and lauded their achievements to other colleagues and higher-ups. In meetings, they put the kibosh on behavior that alienated women—such as when male colleagues began to outboast each other—and praised other men for considering women for promotions.

The challenge for companies is showing midlevel male managers they aren’t the problem—even if, sometimes, they are.

Frank Dobbin, a Harvard University professor of sociology who has studied employment data from more than 800 companies, says tactics such as mandatory diversity training, grievance protocols and hiring restrictions often backfire as managers bridle at new rules.

More promising is tapping them to act as sponsors for women or to take part in groups charged with finding solutions, he says.

National Life Group, a Montpelier, Vt.-based financial-services company with 1,100 employees, evaluates its 200 managers each year on how they meet broad principles—such as “value an inclusive, diverse culture” and “encourage others to speak their minds”—aimed partly at bolstering women.

Both peers and direct reports evaluate those managers, who afterward meet with their teams to discuss what they do well and where there is room for improvement. Those assessments, Chief Executive
Mehran Assadi
says, are conducted separately from the annual bonus cycle so that the managers don’t view them as punitive.

In the same vein, Mr. Assadi says he doesn’t push diversity quotas. “I never want a situation where someone says, ‘The CEO wants a woman in this role,’ ” he says. Instead, he says, he will often weigh in on hiring or promotion conversations by asking, “Are we getting enough diversity of thinking here?”

These combined efforts have helped boost the number of women in senior roles at National Life Group by nearly a third over the past five years, with women now representing 39% of senior leaders, the company says.

Roles that matter

Some companies are trying to alter the drift of many women into roles that don’t have a direct impact on the bottom line, such as marketing or legal affairs, roles from which it is hard to climb to the most senior positions.

The company has set goals of a 50% female workforce for its U.S. operations by 2025—up from just over 40% now—and a staff of managing directors that is 25% women by 2020—up from about 20% currently.

Agenda Item

More women than men say they consider gender diversity very important.

Not a priority / slightly important priority

A moderately important priority

A very important / top priority

Men

Women

17%

24%

47%

58%

25%

29%

Taking a Pass

Men and women who say gender diversity isn't a priority for them cite the following reasons.

It means deprioritizing individual performance

38%

Women

Men

49%

Other more pressing issues require attention

27%

23%

Diversity efforts highlight differences,

not commonalities

21%

23%

It has already been addressed

17%

21%

I do not see the value

14%

15%

It gives women an unfair advantage

6%

13%

Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2017 survey of 70,000 men and women and study of 222 companies

To help it reach those goals, the company looked at internal data about the kinds of jobs its women employees were doing. Many of its women managers were gravitating toward project-management roles, which, though important, tend not to fast-track careers.

So, two years ago, it began a program to train Accenture women to become technical architects, a role in high demand with clients that involves shaping and implementing strategies around new technologies, and that opens doors more quickly to high-level jobs. Some 1,200 women are currently in the program; 350 have already gotten certified as technical architects.

Accenture also operates a four-year sponsorship program to help launch women managing directors into senior operational roles. In any given year, some 30 women are taking part in the program. Each of the protégés gets two sponsors on Accenture’s global leadership team who mentor them and help launch them on a path to promotions.

The role of the sponsors, Ms. Shook says, is critical: “When the leadership appointments are being made, the sponsors are at the table saying what their sponsees have done.” About 80% of the sponsored women have since expanded core business, or line, responsibilities or gone on to senior roles that have an impact on the bottom line.

Two-career juggle

Another challenge for employers is the work-life crunch their ambitious women managers face at home.

Overall, more than half of senior women managers have a spouse with a similarly demanding career, Lean In and McKinsey found, compared with just 31% of their male counterparts. The majority of high-level men, in contrast, have a stay-at-home spouse or one who works part time, enabling them to focus more on their careers.

For many women in two-career partnerships, the division of household responsibilities is far from equal. Among women who say they are the primary breadwinners in their households, 43% say they are still the ones primarily responsible for coordinating children’s schedules and taking care of home chores. That’s the case for only 12% of men who are their families’ main breadwinners.

Those duties appear to chip away at women’s ambitions over time. Though 60% of women 30 and under say they aspire to be a top executive, once many women are in the thick of raising families—in their 30s and after—only about 37% do.

The Slow Fade

There are imbalances in the numbers of men and women entering most fields of the U.S. economy. Climbing the corporate ladder, these imbalances become more pronounced.

Most women entering a field

Women make up 73% of entry-level positions in health care, 13 percentage points more than the next most, retail, with 60%. Consumer packaged goods ranked third with 59%.

Men

Women

CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS

HEALTH CARE

RETAIL

LEVEL

Average

across all

sectors

Entry

Manager

Director

SVP

VP

C-suite

Board

100%

0

100

100%

25

25

50

50

25

75

75

25

50

0

100

50

100%

25

25

75

75

100

50

50

75

0

75

Fewest women entering a field

Automotive and industrial manufacturing had the lowest percentage of women entering the field with 26%. Next were telecom and IT services and the tech sector with 33% and 36%, respectively.

TECH (HARDWARE

AND SOFTWARE)

TELECOM AND

IT SERVICES

AUTOMOTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

25

50

50

25

100%

0

75

100

75

25

25

50

50

75

75

100

0

100%

25

25

0

100

50

50

75

75

100%

The dropoff from entry level

Losses were slightest in media and entertainment with a drop from 50% to 48%.

In no fields did the representation of women grow from entry level to management. Transport has a fall-off of 20 percentage points, the energy sector nearly as sharp.

MEDIA AND

ENTERTAINMENT

TRANSPORT, TRAVEL, LOGISTICS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

ENERGY AND

BASIC MATERIALS

20-point drop

18-point drop

75

50

50

25

25

75

100%

100

0

100

100%

75

75

50

50

25

25

100%

100

0

25

25

50

50

0

75

75

The Slow Fade

There are imbalances in the numbers of men and women entering most fields of the U.S. economy. Climbing the corporate ladder, these imbalances become more pronounced.

Most women entering a field

Women make up 73% of entry-level positions in health care, 13 percentage points more than the next most, retail, with 60%. Consumer packaged goods ranked third with 59%.

Men

Women

CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS

RETAIL

HEALTH CARE

LEVEL

Average

across all

sectors

Entry

Manager

Director

SVP

VP

C-suite

Board

0

100

100%

50

25

25

50

50

75

75

0

100

100%

25

50

75

100%

25

100

50

0

50

75

25

75

75

25

Fewest women entering a field

Automotive and industrial manufacturing had the lowest percentage of women entering the field with 26%. Next were telecom and IT services and the tech sector with 33% and 36%, respectively.

TELECOM AND

IT SERVICES

AUTOMOTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

TECH (HARDWARE

AND SOFTWARE)

75

50

50

100

100%

25

25

75

0

100%

0

75

75

25

50

100

25

50

25

25

50

75

75

100

0

100%

50

The dropoff from entry level

In no fields did the representation of women grow from entry level to management. Transport has a fall-off of 20 percentage points, the energy sector nearly as sharp.

Losses were slightest in media and entertainment with a drop from 50% to 48%.

ENERGY AND BASIC MATERIALS

TRANSPORT, TRAVEL, LOGISTICS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT

18-point drop

20-point drop

25

25

50

50

75

75

75

75

50

50

25

25

100%

100

0

100%

100

0

75

0

100

100%

25

25

75

50

50

The Slow Fade

There are imbalances in the numbers of men and women entering most fields of the U.S. economy. Climbing the corporate ladder, these imbalances become more pronounced.

Most women entering a field

Women make up 73% of entry-level positions in health care, 13 percentage points more than the next most, retail, with 60%. Consumer packaged goods ranked third with 59%.

Men

Women

RETAIL

HEALTH CARE

LEVEL

Average

across all

sectors

Entry

Manager

Director

SVP

VP

C-suite

Board

100

100%

25

50

25

50

50

75

75

0

100

75

100%

25

75

25

0

50

Fewest women entering a field

Automotive and industrial manufacturing had the lowest percentage of women entering the field with 26%. Next was telecom and IT services with 33%.

AUTOMOTIVE AND

INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

TELECOM AND

IT SERVICES

100

0

25

25

100%

50

25

100%

50

100

50

0

75

25

75

75

75

50

The Slow Fade

There are imbalances in the numbers of men and women entering most fields of the U.S. economy. Climbing the corporate ladder, these imbalances become more pronounced.

Most women entering a field

Women make up 73% of entry-level positions in health care, 13 percentage points more than the next most, retail, with 60%. Consumer packaged goods ranked third with 59%.

Women

Men

HEALTH CARE

LEVEL

Average

across all

sectors

Entry

Manager

Director

SVP

VP

C-suite

Board

25

25

75

75

100

0

100%

50

50

RETAIL

25

75

50

75

50

25

100

0

100%

Fewest women entering a field

Automotive and industrial manufacturing had the lowest percentage of women entering the field with 26%. Next was telecom and IT services with 33%.

AUTOMOTIVE AND

INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

LEVEL

Entry

Manager

Director

SVP

VP

C-suite

Board

75

75

50

0

100

100%

25

25

50

TELECOM AND IT SERVICES

100

100%

25

25

75

50

50

75

0

Note: Not all recorded industries shown.Note: Not all recorded industries shown.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only way up for a good number of women has been to be unburdened by the demands of family life: Nearly a quarter of senior female executives say they are single, in contrast to 10% of men.

Companies “will never heal the problem [of gender inequality] if we aren’t honest about the one-size-fits-all structure of work failing women,” says
Annie Dean,
co-founder and co-CEO of Werk, an online job marketplace for women seeking flexible work arrangements without giving up the leadership track.

Ms. Dean was formerly a corporate real-estate lawyer and had aspirations of becoming partner, until becoming a mother collided with 16-hour days in the office. Days would go by without seeing her first child awake (she now has two), nor did she have time to gain new skills to accelerate her career. “My ambition had not changed,” she says. “But what had been laid out before me to succeed was logistically impossible.”

Nearly half of women surveyed by Lean In and McKinsey say flexible work schedules would help their careers.

A.T. Kearney, where 26% of senior managers and 39% of the total workforce are women, has come up with its own approaches to flexible roles for those firmly on the path to becoming a partner at the professional-services firm. One initiative lets project teams sort out a “charter” of flexible arrangements among themselves, with tips from human resources on what has worked for other groups. The team could decide that one person doesn’t fly out on business trips until Monday, so she can put her children to bed the night before, for instance, while another stops work at 5 p.m. two nights a week so he can go for a run.

The decentralized approach lets both men and women co-workers avail themselves of flexibility when they need it and spurs empathy for others’ work-life challenges, says
Stephanie Foley,
A.T. Kearney’s human-resources chief for the Americas.